Utah Blue Crystal Mine and Yellowcat

My second oldest is in college now, hard to believe. I think the last time I posted on here he was still a pretty young kid and we were collecting petrified wood in the Wyoming desert. Well this past weekend I drove his girlfriend over to meet him in Grand Junction Colorado, and from there on to La Sal Utah for some rock hounding.

This young lady he is dating we have known for a while, but not very well. Her family does camp, but always in a campground and she has never been off road before. The weekend was full of many firsts for her, and I’ll cut to the chase and say she had a great time as did the rest of us. She and I started early Friday morning headed over the Rockies to Grand Junction, Colorado. Along the way the weather was nice, clear and sunny, and no wind to speak of.

We picked up my son in Grand Junction and took the scenic route from there to La Sal, Utah.

There isn’t much in La Sal, I think it was the smallest town S (as I will refer to the sweet young lady joining us in this adventure) had ever been in. We asked at the little store if there was any other rockhounding in the area since our mine visit wasn’t until the next morning. We got a few snacks to show our thanks for the help, although in truth they didn’t know, or at least wouldn’t let on that they knew, anything about rocks in the area beyond the mine.

We did some recon so we knew where to go in the morning, and I was able to get enough cell coverage to update my OnX maps with all the public and private land data in the area so we could be certain we were camping on public ground.

As we scouted for a place to camp we quickly located a spot that was flat and protected by some rock outcroppings and trees, but was close to a main 2-track. We decided to see if we could find anything a little less conspicuous and spent an hour scraping new pinstripes into the side of my truck as we poked around the area. There wasn’t much flat ground large enough for our fairly large cabin tent so we resigned ourselves to go back to the first spot we’d found. We hadn’t more then parked and several other vehicles rolled up and set up camp less than 100 feet from us. Immediately dogs were barking and we heard a lot of voices. Any hope of a quiet night was quickly put out, which as it turned out wouldn’t have mattered.

We started unloading the truck while I scraped a flat area free of sticks and rocks then unpacked the tent. As we were unloading the wind started picking up and by the time I was ready to lay out the tent the winds were gusting over 30MPH. Things took a sudden turn when I realized after frantically searching that I had failed to put the tent stakes back in the bag with the tent after the last hunting trip of the previous fall. S didn’t know what to think. Even though she hadn’t done any dispersed camping before she knew stakes were a pretty big deal and with the more-than-obvious gale force winds she thought this trip was over before it started. It was getting dark and the temps were noticeably dropping, then the rain started.

I was proud of my son, I’ll call him C, who took his cues from me and from a lifetime of trips where things never seem to go as planned and never broke stride as I said well let’s see if we can find sticks enough that could work as stakes. I think if the wind hadn’t been so intent, or the soil had been anything other than fine, loose sand the sticks could have worked. We found quite a few and they had some stiffness to them, but in the end the cards were stacked against us so we abandoned the sticks.

I pulled the truck up beside the flat spot upwind from the tent and we lashed the tent to the truck along its narrower side. While C and S filled the tent with all our gear and started setting up the cots to hold the tent down from the inside, I found and rolled several boulders to the other corners of the tent. I secured the two corners with lengths of rope and got on the rain fly which I also tied to the truck and boulders.

S couldn’t believe we got the tent up, but the fun was just beginning. The wind never relented and the temperature continued to drop. We all had a quick dinner in the tent then climbed into our bags. C and I had brought our warmer weather bags since it had been hot in Grand Junction and Moab. I had a slightly warmer bag so I gave him my mattress pad. Overnight the rain turned to snow and the temperature got into the 20s. He and I both got up early for the cold, shivering and exhausted from the loud tent and driving rain and snow. S wasn’t awake, so he and I got dressed and started moving around to warm up. After a while S started to stir and to my absolute shock she sat up and yawned with a big smile on her face and wished us a chipper Good Morning.

I asked her if she got any sleep and she said “Oh yeah I slept great, I was warm and cozy all night”

Apparently my son hit the jackpot. I was day dreaming of camping trips with grandchildren and family reunions as he loudly said “Dad” and jarred me back to reality. We had some breakfast then packed up and headed back into La Sal so they could use a bathroom and I could get some coffee.

The little store had a state of the art Keurig coffee machine, but somehow managed to get the worst coffee I’ve had in a long time. I choked it down for the caffeine and warmth, then the lady who had been there the night before came in and said hi and let us know they were having a breakfast at the fire station for a fund raiser. If I hadn’t spent so much on the mine fee I would have accepted. I like that sort of thing and a nice breakfast sounded good.

We thanked her anyway and headed back to the mine.

By the time we got there the trip organizers had showed up and we got to chatting a bit. Over the next 30 minutes probably 20 people showed up for the dig. There were plenty of piles to dig and we quickly started finding material after the briefing for rules and safety.

We mostly stuck to using flat plastic feed scoops to sort of shave layers of sand, which gave us all plenty of specimens to bring home. I think the better tool would have been the 3-finger garden claw tool the more experienced folks used, as they found lots of larger berries pretty easily.

Some of the blueberries:


A piece of host rock with some chatoyant malachite:


The dig area with the La Sal mountains in the background:


This was the first time S had ever been rockhounding, and she couldn’t believe how much she was able to find. I cautioned her that digging in an active mine’s tailings was about the best collecting you can do, so not to be disappointed if she didn’t find as much when we went to a public area.

After the time was up we drove to Moab to get some tent stakes, which we quickly found, and then we drove up to the Yellowcat/Poison Strip area.

The views as we headed back south from I70 were great:


We did a little exploring but I was bummed to find claim markers scattered around lying flat on the ground the few places we stopped. I did get in a nice hike and saw some nice pet wood. We decided to go look for a spot to camp before it got too late, which we did, and it was stunning:





With the addition of stakes and only a slight breeze we set up the tent well off the road behind a large rock outcropping. The night was still and calm, and was much warmer so we all got a good night’s sleep, although S once again slept the longest and woke up the most refreshed.

We headed back to the Poison Strip area and continued searching for anywhere we couldn’t find claim markers and I have to say we didn’t find anywhere. I don’t know how exactly claims work, if the markers lying all on the ground was an indication they had been abandoned or weren’t current, so we played it safe. I found a few pieces of agate on the road so I kept those, but with no real understanding of what is claimed and what wasn’t I didn’t want to risk it. From my novice perspective there is nowhere to collect along the Poison Strip unless maybe you can get back up on top of the bluff and walk further north, I just don’t know what is there.

We got some great views of the back side of Arches National Park and still had fun looking;


The whole haul